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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27689429">Dancing with the Dead</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/muurmuur/pseuds/muurmuur'>muurmuur</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Glenn lives, And grapples with a considerable amount of trauma, Getting Back Together, Grief/Mourning, Holst solves a few mysteries, M/M, Minor Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius, Minor Hilda Valentine Goneril/Claude von Riegan, Post-War Azure Moon Route, Sexual Content, Unbeknownst to the rest of the world</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 02:15:10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>8,356</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27689429</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/muurmuur/pseuds/muurmuur</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Holst is forced to face his past when he’s introduced to his long-dead lover’s brother during a diplomatic visit to Fhirdiad. His everlasting broken heart becomes considerably more difficult to ignore once he starts to notice a familiar ghost in the capital’s crowds. Come hell or high water, he’ll chase after it.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Claude von Riegan &amp; Holst Goneril, Felix Fraldarius &amp; Holst Goneril, Glenn Fraldarius/Holst Goneril, Hilda Valentine Goneril &amp; Holst Goneril, Ingrid Galatea &amp; Holst Goneril</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Dancing with the Dead</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Faerghus is a shithole.</p><p>It’s always cold. In the summer, in the winter. Holst’s nose starts to drip as soon as he sets foot on the muddy road that turns Daphnel into Galatea. Diplomacy will be the end of House Goneril. All he needs to do is give himself a good shake and out will roll his bollocks from the leg of his trousers, frozen solid into useless marbles the same quartz shade as his hair.</p><p>And the people? Shit. They’re miserable. It’s been ten years since the end of the war, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at a Faerghan. Half of them seem to think that Leicester was where emperors came from, as if the Alliance hadn’t been Faerghus for far longer than it wasn’t. And of course Holst gets the brunt of this misplaced sense of national pride, because while the rest of the now defunct Roundtable had been made up of perfumed bureaucrats, he’d been the muscle that got things done. He’s got the fucked up face to prove it, too. Even Hilda’s jewels can’t pretty up the scars. So he looks like a bandit, and maybe it’s not entirely Faerghus’ fault for mistaking him for one, but that doesn’t mean that he likes it when they glare at him over their drinks in every ramshackle tavern between Conand and Fhirdiad. </p><p>And the damned place’s got no color. Like all good things in life, Leicester is gold, and green, and blue. Faerghus is brown. All of it. Horse shit in every direction. The only thing left to look at is the sky, and it’s grey every single day of the year. No wonder they’re always praying. Might as well bow your head in a place like that.</p><p>But Faerghus is more than manure and sullen apostles. It’s also the seat of Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, son of Lambert, the Savior King of Fodlan, Scion of Loog, Emperor of Adrestia and Sovereign Duke of Leicester, Anointed by the Oracle of Sothis, and Pisser of Ambrosia, depending on who you ask. Not that Holst dislikes King Dimitri. Instead of waging war on littler nations like his ilk had so often done in the past, the King seems hellbent on pacifying them. His apparent benevolence has been a boon to Sreng and Duscur, independent and thriving once more, which means good tidings for Almyra as well. And as the only brother to the Queen Consort of Almyra, Holst supposes that keeping Dimitri generous with his international affairs is in his best interest, too.</p><p>Or at least Khalid had spun it that way. He’d always been better at talking than Holst. Which is why it’s so absurd that Holst had been named an envoy for the Almyran crown, not to mention the fact that he isn’t a denizen of the proud eastern nation himself. Even Hilda would’ve been a better option, although Holst knows that he’s more likely to become King Goneril than to convince her to make the journey. She’s far more content making him nieces and nephews with her own king, and so once again Holst has been outsmarted by younger and more conniving minds.</p><p>The trek eases his guilty conscience, at least. Maybe it’s something like a pilgrimage. He’s killed too many Almyrans to ever make amends, and more than enough Faerghans, back when there’d been two different types. So what if the cold makes his bones ache? He deserves a hobbled spine just like he deserves watered-down ale and sour stares. And it’s not like there’s much for him to do back at the Locket. He doesn’t imagine his good-brother intends to wage war on him, and even if he did, Khalid would only need an afternoon to manage it, the way the border guard has thinned in recent years. They’re all like Holst, in any case: old.</p><p>“Tired.”</p><p>“Fair enough,” a feminine voice replies.</p><p>Holst nearly falls from his chair as he remembers who he is, and where, and parts of when, and most of the why. At least his wandering mind had done the dirty work of refusing the woman— who’s already sauntered along to the next table of drunk potentials—from warming his bed. <em>Tired</em>. Yes, what’s more, that’s the truth of it. There’d been a time when he’d been happy to tuck pretty creatures beneath his blankets, but now the proposal seems nothing short of exhausting. Holst takes a drink of his tasteless brew and thinks about Fhirdiad instead. Might as well get all of the thinking out of the way before he’s cross-eyed.</p><p>He’ll arrive in the capital in the morning after an easy final ride. Lorenz Gloucester will be waiting for him in the gardens, most likely, Khalid had suggested— you know Lorenz, he’d said. Gloucester is a count as much as Holst is a duke, which is to say that he isn’t, not any longer, but their names still have enough of a reputation to secure certain privileges.</p><p>Lorenz’s privilege is more permanent. He serves as a royal advisor, although of what Holst isn’t entirely certain. Not that Khalid hadn’t bothered to tell him, but rather because it’d been unimportant enough for Holst to forget. What matters is that Lorenz knows Fhirdiad as well as the back of his gloved hand. With any luck, he’ll be able to shepherd Holst to the throne room in order to parrot Khalid’s pledge of lasting alliance and whisk him out again before the King thinks to ask any clarifying questions.</p><p>Six days of riding for an afternoon of hot air. Oh well. It could be worse, Holst wagers, sloshing the last three fingers worth of ale around the bottom of his tankard. It could be ten years of peace and thirty-two of a hundred little wars fought in craggy hinterlands and alone in his own bedroom.</p><p>Counting the years off the tips of his fingers catches his attention on the lesser fact that he’ll be forty-three in two week’s time. No wonder Hilda had been so insistent that he ride at a clipped pace. He toys with the silver ring she’d gifted him last year. Like most of the baubles she makes for him, strung along his fingers and through his ears, its middle is adorned with a fat sapphire. The rings must look strange. His hands are a mess. He’d lived like a mountain goat back when the Locket had been difficult to master. When he wasn’t bracing against Almyran incursions, he’d spent his afternoons felling the massive pines that risked summer fires and hid archers beneath their boughs.</p><p>Now there’s a new generation of foolhardy upstarts shaving the Locket bald. Holst has graduated to sitting on his ass inside the holdfast. It doesn’t matter. The damage has already been done. He doubts the callouses will ever soften on his palms. His knuckles have been broken more times than he can count. His skin is weathered and scarred. Wearing rings on hands like that is like painting color on a shattered window. What’s the point?</p><p>He likes them. That’s the point. He rubs his thumb along the smooth undersides of the bands on the pointer, middle, ring fingers of his right hand. The gemstones wink and glitter in the muddy lamplight. Blue, beautiful, like blue eyes as deep as the harbor in Derdriu. Dark lashes. Pale skin.</p><p>He sighs all of the air from his lungs and drains his drink before signaling for a second round.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>“Lord Goneril,” Lorenz greets him primly the following afternoon. Holst finds him in the gardens, just like Khalid had guessed. The royal grounds have nothing on Derdriu’s rose gardens, and they pale in comparison with the labyrinthine arbors that circle the palace in Almyra, but it’s a relief to see green leaves again. Lorenz is seated at a tea table tucked between two dormant flowering shrubs, looking much like a bloom himself in lavender brocade matched a few shades lighter to his long hair. Holst tosses himself into an empty chair. It creaks under his weight. </p><p>“Hey, Gloucester.”</p><p>“I see that you have deigned to clean yourself before seeking an audience with His Majesty the King,” Lorenz sniffs, eyes narrowing as he makes an inspection of the stuffy doublet that Hilda, by way of her usual menagerie of handmaidens and artisans, has forced Holst to wear. He’d inadvertently folded a crease into the back by shoving it into his saddlebags, and already lost one button in the trek between his rented room and the palace yard, but House Goneril’s deep maroon has always flattered him. It looks good enough.</p><p>The funny thing is that he’d liked it, once: pomp. Not like Lorenz, of course, who always looks like he’s one cravat away from transmogrifying into a candelabra, but he’d liked the puzzle of courtly attire when he’d been a boy, just like he’d taken to dancing, and had learned the names of all of the wines his father’s equerry had been tasked with decanting in the fragrant cellar dug deep into the Locket’s heart.</p><p>It’d been important. Back then, Leicester had meant something. All of the soft-skinned heirs at Garreg Mach had mocked the Alliance. Called them sheepherders and thieves. Balthus only made it worse, betting and fighting his way through everything, and Godfrey Riegan had been too shy to manage much of anything at all. But the mockery had stopped once Holst had trounced the gossips. He was well read. He could dance. He could beat anyone bloody, but he’d always toast his sparring partners afterwards as if they’d both come out on top. He wasn’t a shepherd. He was a duke’s son. One day, perhaps a sovereign.</p><p>Of course, that wasn’t how things had panned out. Although he’d done it with a fair hand, King Dimitri had still broken the Alliance apart. The old holdouts remain, but they aren’t like they’d once been. Derdriu is simply a port and a pleasant distraction from Fhirdiad’s grey and silver. The Locket is a bridge at the end of an open door. And Holst is a foreign queen’s unmarried elder brother, dressed in wrinkled clothes, lucky to play messenger between more powerful men.</p><p>He clears his throat. “Hope I don’t disappoint.”</p><p>“You will do serviceably, I am sure,” Lorenz replies. He smooths a crease from the back of his glove. “Alas, the King has a fair number of petitioners today, and so I will be unable to accompany you myself.”</p><p>“You throwing me to the wolves?”</p><p>“If I may, a recommendation: some would consider it treasonous to imply that your liege is a beast.” Lorenz chides him loudly enough for it to be clear that it isn’t so dangerous an insinuation. That’s good. Dimitri has a solid reputation, but that sort of thing is best tested by practical application. If Holst isn’t going to get thrown into the dungeons for name-calling, Khalid might be on to something in softening what’s left of the border.</p><p>“I won’t go howling in the throne room,” Holst promises. Lorenz turns an annoyed shade of pink. It amuses Holst just as much as it had when Lorenz had been a little boy pouting on a pony when their fathers had once forced them to ride together during Roundtable retreats.</p><p>“A clever strategy,” Lorenz drawls. “What other scheming does our friend in the east propose?”</p><p>“Roads, most importantly. There’s some land southwest of the Locket that’s suited for it. It was clearcut a few years past. It’ll be expensive, but we could build a proper thoroughfare. It’ll give merchants back at least four days in travel, and’ll keep them safe from the wash-outs we’ve been having on the old pass. With that sort of time we’ll be able to do more trade with the harvests. Fruits. Heavier goods, too. Almyran olive oil would make a man a fortune in Fhirdiad.”</p><p>“And how does King Khalid intend to pay for these roads?”</p><p>“With a generous contribution from His Majesty, along with a generous contribution of his own,” Holst says with a wink. “We both stand to benefit from it. Seems reasonable to split the difference, don’t you think?”</p><p>Lorenz studies him. “Tell me, Lord Goneril. When you speak of <em>we</em>, to whom, exactly, do your loyalties lie?”</p><p>“To the Locket,” Holst replies, which is the same answer he gave Khalid when he asked the question, too. Lorenz seems just as unsatisfied by the response.</p><p>“As I have said before,” Lorenz huffs, “my schedule is rather demanding. I fear I do not have time for your sense of humor. Allow me to be more forthright. You do realize that you are a subject of the Kingdom of Fodlan, do you not?”</p><p>“Tried, true, and tax-paying,” Holst laughs. “Don’t worry, Lorenz. I’m not here to offend our king. Hilda’s the one you should be chiding for goddess and country, if you’re really on about that.”</p><p>Lorenz’s glare softens slightly. “She always was one to avoid protocol whenever possible,” he sighs. “I pray that she is well?”</p><p>“Right as rain,” Holst agrees with a smile. “She’s accomplished quite a lot without anyone catching wind that she’s done it. Loved the emeralds, too, by the way. Thank you for that. You know she misses the market.”</p><p>“Well,” Lorenz huffs, “it was no matter. Any man born with a pair of eyes can appreciate a good stone. She was the natural candidate to make the most of them.” His haughtiness continues to melt. “And young Signy?” </p><p>“Not so young anymore,” Holst admits as he pictures Almyra’s indomitable garnet-eyed crown princess. “Nine years old, and she’s decided to teach herself Dagdan. I have a sneaking suspicion it’s because someone’s told her that they keep war-dogs. Other princesses might go about getting themselves a puppy by simply asking for one, but she <em>is</em> her father’s daughter.”</p><p>“Yes,” Lorenz replies, this time finally with a smile of his own, “he always did have a peculiar way of doing things.”</p><p>A distant bell tolls a cheery tune. Lorenz stiffens, eyes darting to the grey horizon as he rises from his seat. “And so I am already in danger of arriving late to my appointments. Do be brave, Lord Holst. You have survived a war. I trust you can manage a palace.” Holst looks to the shadow cast by the monstrous building in trepidation. Lorenz sighs. “You need simply to enter at the main gates and continue onwards in a straight fashion. Look for the largest doors. People. If you find yourselves in a privy, I fear you will have lost your way. But the palace folk are a generous sort. As long as you do not tell them that you are looking for a wolf, surely they will point you in the proper direction.”</p><p>“Fine,” Holst groans, soundly defeated by the way Lorenz has already turned to abandon him. He stands and attempts to flatten the folded hem of one of his sleeves. “Tell His Majesty that it’s a good proposal, won’t you?”</p><p>“Roads,” Lorenz remembers, voice pitched as if what he’s said is absolutely preposterous. “Almyra has been locked in a bloody battle with the west for hundreds of years, and your grand tactician king intends to bring it all to an end by carving roads into a mountaintop.”</p><p>“It’s a good idea, Lorenz.”</p><p>Lorenz’s shoulders slump slightly. “It is a passable idea,” he lies, because if there’s one thing Lorenz is good at, it’s his ledgers. Besides, Khalid wouldn’t have sent Holst if there was any real doubt in garnering Dimitri’s support. It’s starting to feel like a waste of time, now that Holst’s thinking about it more clearly.</p><p>“Good day, Lord Goneril,” Lorenz finishes curtly. He tilts his head forward in a final salute before turning on his heels to stride off into one of the palace’s administrative wings. Holst watches him go with a long-winded sigh before palming over his hair. He’d pulled it back into a stubby knot that morning. Recently he’s started to shave the sides to a neat bristle, but cutting the rest short has proven more daunting.</p><p>He’d gone grey too early, like most young generals did, but even pink-and-peppered, he’s always been vain about his hair. And yet in recent years, much like most everything else, the idea of styling it seems absurd. The third and final time he’d broken his nose it hadn’t set straight again afterwards. The ugly crook of the tip has made it less appealing to look at himself in the mirror. He should just shave his head and be done with it before he turns himself into a hoary hermit. But he hasn’t. At least not yet. That’s how most things go in his life: at least not yet.</p><p>He finds the main gates into the palace. Like most everything else in Fhirdiad, they are artlessly foreboding. A path made from cobblestones the size of his skull lead him into the courtyard. Drably dressed courtiers mill along the entrance stairs. He weaves himself between them, ignoring the stares that the crest of Goneril on his breast garners from some of the older members among the assembly.</p><p>The halls inside are cavernous. His boots clack against the marble. He feels like he’s interrupting a sermon, the way that everyone speaks in hushed tones as they filter from one salon to the next, one hall to another. He walks in a straight line like Lorenz had instructed. As promised, a series of larger and larger doors draw him towards the palace’s heart, which must, he wagers, be the throne room.</p><p>Or could it be the armory? The treasury? The royal nursery? Is he two sets of doors away from stumbling upon the King soaking in his morning bath?</p><p>“You there!”</p><p>Holst freezes beneath the next threshold. Sharp, even footsteps follow in his wake. A guard, no doubt. Shit. Surely Hilda will pay his way out of a jail cell barred for bad behavior, won’t she? He turns towards the voice and feels his blood crackle into ice. Fate snatches him with a violent grip and twists him backwards into his youth. He is eighteen years old. Arrogant, naive, hot-blooded. He conquers Garreg Mach in a matter of days. The victory is short lived. Nothing could have prepared him for him: blue eyes, black hair. For a horrible and wondrous moment Holst sees him again for the first time. The glare is the same, so venomous that it makes the hair on the nape of Holst’s neck stand on end. So too are the man’s smooth, purposeful movements, part bestial, part clockwork precise.</p><p>The mirage breaks with the next crack of the interloper’s heel. His hair is pulled into a long tail with none of the wave in it that Holst remembers. His build is off— not much, but enough. Holst’s heart kicks to life again when he sees the amber of his eyes.</p><p>“Are you Holst Goneril?”</p><p>Like Holst, the man is dressed in a doublet with a crest printed over the breast. The symbol is dominated by the toothy Blaiddyd sigil, just like every scrap of cloth and carved ornament within three days’ ride, but it’s bracketed with a shield-like shape that makes Holst’s chest ache.</p><p>“You’re late,” the man continues icily. He presses forward without further explanation. A single golden cord is pinned from his right shoulder to drape into his collar. It’s a mark of distinction, no matter how humble the presentation. All at once, years of news from the capital that Holst had so neatly packed away inside himself spill out and demand to be read. This is the king’s husband. He is notorious for his short temper. His devotion to the kingdom is indisputable. The knights adore him. He’s something of a patron saint.</p><p>When he first learned to talk, he struggled with a stutter. It made him cry with frustration whenever his nursemaids couldn’t understand what he wanted to say. His favorite toy was a small lion with a mane made from knotted yarn. He was afraid of horses, but was fearless in the face of even the meanest hunting dogs. He wrote his Rs backwards when he first learned his alphabet, but he beat his peers in writing letters by an entire precocious year. </p><p>He was Glenn’s little brother. Glenn had loved him fiercely. Holst knows this because he had, above all other things, loved Glenn.</p><p>“I would have expected you to travel by wyvern,” Felix says. “It’s a long ride from the Locket.”</p><p>Holst realizes that he’s trailing behind Felix like a shadow. They’re still headed forward. Either he was right about the throne room, or Felix is about to throw him into a cell himself.</p><p>“I’m not much for flying,” he manages, fighting the way his tongue’s still sticking to the roof of his mouth. “Broke my back.” Shit. He didn’t mean to say that. Felix glances over his shoulder at him, surprised. “At the end of the war,” Holst adds. He doesn’t think Felix will press for more details, but the silence left between them is almost worse. “After a very long fall. I’m fonder of horses.”</p><p>He doesn’t add that it’d been Gloucester men who’d shot him from the sky in a last-ditch effort to snatch the doomed Roundtable from Khalid, then named Claude. He doesn’t say that House Gloucester did it because the Archbishop had poached Lorenz into Dimitri’s service two years before that, either. It doesn’t matter. The war is over, after all.</p><p>“Hm,” says Felix. He braces his arms against a final set of doors. They swing open to reveal an ostentatious throne room filled with gilded wood and tapestries adorned with gryphons and roaring lions. The thrones themselves are empty. A towering man dressed in a simple tunic and black trousers is slowly walking a circle into the scarlet runner splitting the room in half. He turns and smiles as they enter. It isn’t directed at Holst, but he feels himself warming slightly despite the fact that he might as well not be there at all. It is already obvious that Dimitri is a good king.</p><p>“Lord Goneril,” he greets him, and then he dashes forward, waving at him as Holst shuffles to take a knee. “That isn’t necessary. We have the benefit of being alone, do we not? There is no need for formalities.”</p><p>Felix huffs in protest, which only makes Dimitri’s smile widen. </p><p>“Your Majesty,” Holst says. He dips his head in the hopes of finding middle ground.</p><p>“It is my wish that we speak together as old friends,” Dimitri continues smoothly. “We are in your debt for your work in pacifying the eastern front. I must also admit that I was your most ardent admirer as a boy.”</p><p>“Dimitri,” Felix grumbles. It makes Dimitri laugh. They gravitate towards one another. Holst has a feeling that it’s subconscious. He stands his ground on the carpet while they settle themselves to lean against opposite corners of a long table dominated by a colorful map.</p><p>“I’m honored to hear it, Your Majesty.”</p><p>“As was I to receive word that you would seek an audience on such important matters, and on behalf of our mutual acquaintance.”</p><p>“King Khalid wishes for me to express the same to Your Grace.”</p><p>Dimitri laughs and wags his head. “And does good King Khalid insist that you call him <em>Your Grace</em> as well?”</p><p>To be quite honest, it’d been a difficult transition to stop calling him kiddo. Holst feels his lips twitch into a grin.</p><p>“How is he?” Dimitri asks earnestly. “Your dear sister has recently given him a son, is that right? I pray that mother and child both are in good health?”</p><p>“Happy and hale,” Holst agrees. Almyra has been celebrating the birth of the prince for months, of course. There is no doubt that he will one day be a great diplomat, the way his father has already taken to tucking him into a sling strapped to his chest to giggle and gurgle during his assemblies. “They’ve named the lad Aydin, after his grandfather on his father’s side.” </p><p>“A fine name. Let it be that he enjoys a long life of peace and prosperity.”</p><p>Holst takes that opportunity to recite Khalid’s proposal on the very topic of peace, prosperity, and proper infrastructure. Dimitri listens with rapt attention. At one point he turns to sketch out the imagined thoroughfare along the map pinned across the table. It’s as good as signing his regal signature along a dotted line. Holst feels the old satisfaction of state-keeping kindling to life in his chest. Yes, he’d done this once, hadn’t he? By the goddess, he’d even been good at it.</p><p>They spend the rest of the morning and the better part of the afternoon polishing their plans. At last Felix badgers Dimitri into bringing their conversations to an end, warning him that the rest of his day ahead will be filled with the far more miserable task of mediating a mean debate between the guilds responsible for repairing Fhirdiad’s ancient sewer system. Dimitri looks as though he wishes to hide under Holst’s cape in order to escape. They part ways with Dimitri’s apology that they cannot treat him to a meal, and an ambiguous promise that their conversation will continue at a later date— not just on roads, but on old stories of Holst’s adventurous youth, and further details on the state of affairs in the east, and how Dimitri can best reform his teenaged friendship with the man who now wears the Almyran crown.</p><p>It makes Holst’s head spin. He isn’t certain how to take everything. Felix lives up to his reputation, but in a kinder way than Holst had imagined. Throughout their long discussion he begins to warm to Holst’s presence— or perhaps it’s that he forgets about it entirely—and becomes nearly gregarious near the end, bickering with Dimitri as they battle over the best foremen to tap for the task. For his part, Dimitri is generous and even-keeled. He’d been a bloody berserker once, but Holst sees none of that in him now. Khalid will be thrilled with the news. Holst has always suspected that he has a soft spot for him.</p><p>And yet despite the day’s victory, anxiety pinches at Holst’s nape as he retraces his steps to the palace courtyard. Nothing else has changed. The courtiers still whisper and scrape through the halls. The sky outside is filled with the same ash-colored clouds. His breath catches in his throat. By the time he’s escaped into the street he can barely force it into his lungs at all.</p><p>So it was a worthy sacrifice. Glenn. His skeleton must be buried around here, somewhere. Maybe it’d been beneath Holst’s feet while he’d regaled Dimitri with old war stories. How many bones had they retrieved, back then? They’d said it’d been a massacre. Is he nothing more than teeth and a stray femur bone blackened into charcoal? The funeral had been closed casket, after all. Dimitri and Felix must not have remembered— Holst, that is, lurking at the back of the endless line of mourners under the auspices of political solidarity alongside his father and young sister.</p><p>Hilda had known. She’d always been so bright. As soon as she’d seen him, sallow-skinned, nearly green, his cheeks gaunt from skipped meals, she’d gripped his fingers in her own hot little hand and squeezed them so hard that he’d nearly felt it through the fog of his grief. He’d tottered, untethered, nearly tumbling forward into the backs of the delegation from Daphnel. All he’d wanted to do was tear the lid from the shrouded casket and crawl inside. </p><p>Dimitri is a triumph. The people must shiver at the thought of a different world in which he hadn’t lived to wear a crown.</p><p>Holst needs a drink.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>He finds it in a dingy tavern tucked into the capital’s armpit. None of the patrons know the shape of the Goneril crest on his doublet from a pile of pig shit. He shoves his way to a table and waves down a pair of tankards from an oily-haired serving girl. She grunts in appreciation when he piles enough coins into her palm to make sure he drinks until his blood turns into ale. </p><p>His eyes start to play tricks on him in the dark. He lets them. The buck-toothed, red-nosed men scattered along the table transform into old ghosts. There’s Godfrey Riegan, green-eyed and curly haired, blushing as one of the timid Hresvelg princesses compliments his mare. Holst loves the boy like a brother, just like he loves Duke Riegan as a father to better the one he’s never really had. Godfrey, in turn, seems absolutely delighted by the prospect of Holst usurping his all-but-fated destiny at the head of the Roundtable. The Duke will be disappointed, but Holst and Godfrey have already begun to scheme a way to heal his hurt feelings.</p><p>Balthus finds the entire ordeal hilarious. He’s there as well, uniform jacket unbuttoned as garishly as his grin. Holst pockets already feel lighter for whatever loan he’s about to amend. The trio rules the Golden Deer, and the Golden Deer in turn have dominated Garreg Mach since their unexpected victory during the Battle of the Eagle and the Lion.</p><p>All of that— and his education as well, Sothis forgive him —plays second fiddle to Glenn. Holst follows at his heels like a sick dog. It’s been like that from the beginning, when he’d first introduced himself at the training grounds. They’d known of each other for years, of course, as two dukes’ sons both poised to inherit the frontlines of future wars. The nebulous, dark-haired boy he’d always imagined is nothing compared to the real thing. Holst’s strength comes from his size. He’d outgrown his father’s height at fourteen and has the shoulders to match. There’s no nuance to his training regimen. He might as well be a bull running circles in a paddock.</p><p>Glenn is the opposite. Every inch of him is perfect. Lithe. Dangerous. They say that he’s a prodigy. He looks like he could slice the sky in half when he swings his sword. Holst feels like he’s been struck by lightening as soon as he shakes his hand. Glenn knows. He smirks. His cheeks are pink from his drills. Holst wants to taste the color; the damp hair at his temples, tightened with sweat into curls that loosen into a wave where it’s pulled back into a messy tail. Even with their palms still pressed together in greeting, Glenn reads him as well as if he’d always known him. </p><p>There is no courtship. They take from each other willingly. Glenn tells him about his betrothal to a girl ten years’ his junior. In the admission, Holst understands the unspoken invitation into his empty marriage bed. It’s reckless, but they are both prideful creatures living in a world that will demand too much from them. Maybe part of it is that they can smell the blood on the wind. Holst tells him that he loves him after two months spent sneaking into his dormitory room. Glenn believes him. Says it back.</p><p>They graduate. King Lambert rewards Glenn by naming him as the crown prince’s personal escort. It’s a boon. Glenn cares greatly for the boy. He’s kind, and clever without the cynicism that often blooms in privileged children. King Lambert is a good king, but in Dimitri Glenn sees something even better. What more, Felix is the prince’s shadow. It seems as though it’ll be easy enough to convince Duke Fraldarius to let Felix live as King Lambert’s ward. Glenn glows with excitement as he predicts the years ahead: Felix coming to age in the bustle of the capital instead of the frozen gloom of the duchy, learning from the best governesses at the prince’s right hand, promised a future full of books and clever debates instead of bloody swords.</p><p>And living in Fhirdiad means sidestepping Glenn’s own fate as a knight destined to patrol the Kingdom’s sprawl. He’ll only be a day’s ride to Derdriu on wyvern-back.</p><p>“And you,” he says that final night, sprawled across the cooling sheets of their bed as Holst stands to pour two glasses of wine from the bottle stolen from the tavern downstairs. “Duke Goneril.”</p><p>Holst laughs. He is a duke, that’s true: that had been his father’s graduation gift, the coward. “I don’t have the Roundtable just yet,” he counters, knowing what Glenn’s left unsaid.</p><p>“Riegan will give it to you.” Glenn takes the glass Holst offers to him upon his return to the bed. The gravel in his voice makes Holst shiver. Glenn watches him with amusement, eyes as sharp as his blade as he sips his drink. “He adores you.”</p><p>“Not as much as his own son.”</p><p>“Oh, Goff adores you, too,” Glenn sighs. He rolls his eyes and takes a longer gulp. Holst watches his throat bob hungrily. “I’d have half a mind to be jealous, if he wasn’t so hypnotized by his princess.”</p><p>Holst grins. He grabs Glenn by the ankle, smoothing a thumb over the bone. “Are you really jealous?”</p><p>“No,” Glenn snaps, realizing his mistake too late.</p><p>“Tell me. Describe the feeling for me.”</p><p>Glenn snorts and kicks off his hand. “It’s like a horsefly buzzing around my head right before I’ve had the chance to swat it.” </p><p>“You know,” Holst says, ignoring Glenn’s unconvincing retort as he sidles closer to him, “he said that he’s planning to propose.”</p><p>“You’re joking. Riegan will be furious to be caught unawares.”</p><p>Holst shrugs. “Goff says he’ll run away if it comes to that.” He takes a drink himself, enjoying the salt left on his lips from Glenn’s skin as it combines with the sweet berry of the wine. “It’s not as if it’s a poor match. She’s an imperial princess.”</p><p>“The fourth of them.”</p><p>“Doesn’t make her any less of what she is.”</p><p>“I suppose not,” Glenn admits. His voice has dipped into the bored tone he uses when Holst waxes about politics for too long. “So send him off and take his seat. Soon. You’re owed it.”</p><p>“Will you only want me as a more powerful man?” Holst pouts like a mummer, although it isn’t as though his question is entirely toothless. Glenn studies him for a moment. He drains his glass and sets it on the sill above the bed before slinking forward to draw himself into Glenn’s broad lap.</p><p>“I’d prefer you as a pauper,” he says, slipping his strong fingers around Holst’s chin to steady his gaze on his own. Holst’s heart flips in his chest. “I am jealous. Of Leicester. You say you love me, but you’ll never leave her for me. The Roundtable will put you in Derdriu, at least. I want you close. Is that so cruel?”</p><p>“No,” Holst breathes. He leans into Glenn’s palm, transfixed by what he’s said and by his sapphire eyes. What he wants to say back to him is that he’s wrong. He’ll leave it, Leicester: let it burn to the ground. It doesn’t matter if it’s cruel. He’ll sell his soul and a thousand more for Glenn.</p><p>“Enough of this, then.” Glenn leans forward to kiss him. “We’ll talk more of it later. Afterwards. There’s something I want to discuss with you.”</p><p>“What is it?” Holst asks between slips of his tongue into Glenn’s wine stained mouth. “We can discuss it now.”</p><p>“Is that really what you want to do?” Glenn pulls back with a mischievous grin. Holst follows the flick of his gaze towards the window. The night sky has nearly lightened with dawn. In the morning Glenn will ride for Duscur. It a simple visit, but the distance means a full months’ time spent apart. So no, Holst supposes, he’d rather not spend their last few hours alone discussing the finer points of his own political aspirations.</p><p>“Come here,” he growls instead, earning a pleased noise from Glenn as he pushes him backwards against the mattress.</p><p>Holst doesn’t regret his sleepless night the morning after, not when he drowses through a meeting with Count Gloucester, or even when Duke Riegan reprimands him for it. It’s only later that his grief worms its way inside him, tearing at his softest parts as it wails in agony over what Glenn had left forever unsaid. Duke Fraldarius buries his son three months later. It’s too late, and yet there’s nothing to be done about it. The gossips say that the Kingdom of Faerghus will soon fall. Holst remembers nothing of the time in between the Tragedy and the burial. His father is mortified, but he has already abdicated his position, and so the newly-named Duke Goneril simply disappears.</p><p>He re-emerges for the funeral. Hilda brushes his matted hair and sets out the proper clothes for him to wear. She’s too young to do something like that. He hates himself for it. Afterwards, when they return to Derdriu, Duke Riegan pulls him aside and brings him to his study. He pours them both a generous serving of fiery scotch and tells Holst a story about his late wife. Holst knows what he means to say. He appreciates it. It’s a bandage on a mortal wound, but it’s better than leaving him to bleed out alone.</p><p>He doesn’t return the favor a year later when Godfrey is killed. Instead, Holst drinks himself sick and rides across the border to cut apart as many men as he can find. He’s happy for it when Duke Riegan turns his back on him in disgust. With any luck, the rest of the Roundtable will dispose of him as well. He receives word that Godfrey’s betrothed has disappeared in Enbarr. He knows that she must be dead as well. The scales have been lifted from his eyes. This is the world: death, fire, destruction. He has no need for diplomacy. He focuses everything on the east.</p><p>And then Duke Riegan’s grandson arrives. The rest of Leicester exhales in relief. They’d been tormented by the idea of letting the Roundtable fall either to the Gloucesters or to Holst’s vengeful axe. By some strange twist of fate, Holst seems to be the only one among them who sees that Claude is Almyran. He wants to distrust him, but instead he finally understands what Glenn had meant that night he’d shared his excitement over being named Dimitri’s guard. Claude is young, and bright, and earnest. He hides things, and Holst knows why, but he’s better than what’s come before. The revelation tilts Holst’s cruel life on its ear.</p><p>He wakes up with the war. Edelgard chases Claude back into Leicester. Holst prepares the head seat for him on the Roundtable. There is no one else to rely on. Count Gloucester is a traitor. House Ordelia is in ruin. Margrave Edmund is a spineless opportunist. Duke Riegan is an old and ailing man. At last Holst finds Leicester ready to burn, and realizes that Glenn was right: he can’t leave her behind.</p><p>“Still lost the fucking war,” he slurs into his drink. The drunkard beside him laughs in commiseration and knocks his tankard against his own. Holst drains his and lurches to his feet. The world swirls into an oily smear. He needs to piss. He needs to stop thinking about Glenn.</p><p>The streets are empty outside. It’s later than he realized. He stumbles into an alleyway, fumbling with the buttons of his trousers. Makes him smirk. As if anyone would believe him if he told them he spent the morning speaking with the king.</p><p>“Was a duke,” he mutters at the murky puddle between his feet.</p><p>“So pay up, old man,” a voice snarls at his side.</p><p>Holst thinks it’s another figment of his maudlin imagination until he feels the point of a blade pinching against his side. <em>Fuck</em>. Rage rips like wildfire up his spine. He turns, tottering on unsteady feet as he lurches forward to grab the thief by the collar. He misses and squeezes the hot flesh of his throat instead. Good enough. He cracks his skull against the bastard’s own. The man groans and crumples from his grip. Holst hisses when he does, realizing too late that the thief had jabbed that fucking blade of his between his ribs when he’d started to fall.</p><p>“What the fuck!” another voice yelps. The alleyway puddles spatter as more boots race into the narrow space. Holst can’t see shit in the gloom. He pulls the stubby dagger from his side anyway, brandishing it in the direction of the sound with gritted teeth. Like hell he’s going to die in a pool of his own piss.</p><p>He doesn’t have a chance to stop it himself. A shadow parts from the rest and weaves its way between the blurry forms of the approaching men. A long blade catches the moonlight and turns it silver. The men yelp in surprise. Holst has no option but to watch in utter bewilderment. The shadow moves like a marionette with one too few strings, but it’s fast, and strikes true. Two of the men topple to their knees. The third turns to run away. The shadow moves to follow him, but stops when Holst slips sideways against his heel and tumbles against the side of the tavern. Holst presses his hand against his side and stares blearily at the blood slicked across his palm. Shit. It’s deep.</p><p>“Fool,” the shadow rasps. It has a voice like paper being torn in half. It dances closer, sheathing its blade to make an inspection. Holst wants to shoo it away, but the idea of moving his arm makes his side ache.</p><p>There’s a commotion in the road outside. Must be their departed friend. The shadow turns. It’s wearing a long, hooded cloak. Almost ridiculous, really: masked saviors dressed in black, in the dead of the night. Maybe Holst’s just passed out atop the table inside. Maybe he’s already dead. </p><p>“Knight Captain!” the shadow shouts. A distant silver glint reacts. The shadow grips Holst by the arms and gives him a bracing shake. “Help,” it hisses. Holst realizes it’s an order, not a request. He tries to focus his eyes on the glittering shape the shadow had pointed out. There’s two of them— no, four—no, two, again. Goddess, just how deep did that dagger cut?</p><p>The shadow is looking at him. It’s strange. Like looking into an empty well. No. Wait. There. A shape. The white of an eye. The shadow turns into the moonlight. An eye again, this time with enough light to make it out. Blue, beautiful, like blue eyes as deep as the harbor in Derdriu.</p><p>“Captain Galatea!” a man with a thick Morfian brogue cries out. “Here! A man! He’s wounded!”</p><p>He’s alone again. Then he’s not. He hears the clatter of plate. It’s reassuring, somehow. Two sets of strong arms drag him up on his feet. A pair of voices murmur over his fate. It’s difficult to make them out. He decides not to try. In any case, the war is over. Wasn’t that right?</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>Holst wakes with a start. He groans, clapping a hand against the sore spot in his side as he fights off a massive headache and the confounding fact that he recognizes absolutely nothing in the room around him. It’s cleaner than what he’d rented from the tavern master near the palace, for one. There’s a vase with a sprig of wildflowers set at the table at his bedside. He appreciates it, but he’d certainly not brought flowers with him, let alone a vase. </p><p>There’s also a blonde woman bowed over in a chair next to the vase who’d most certainly not been included in his saddlebags. She’s dressed in silver greaves and chainmail paired with a green tunic beneath. Holst glances sideways and spots her discarded cuirass near the door. It’s a fine looking piece.</p><p>The woman’s head bobs further forward. She startles awake, arms sipping from their cross over her chest to grope the empty air for support. A pair of wide, green eyes settle on Holst last, soon paired with a red flush beneath.</p><p>“Lord Goneril,” she recovers neatly, lurching backwards in her chair. “You’re awake.”</p><p>“So I am.” His response comes out as an uncomely croak. It seems to settle the woman’s nerves. She smiles at him in a motherly sort of way, waging her head afterwards.</p><p>“Thank the goddess for that. How do you feel?”</p><p>“Well rested,” Holst lies. He tugs his blanket a little higher, realizing too late that his doublet has been stripped and replaced with a few measly bandages. It makes him feel like a deviant. The woman at his bedside must be at least ten years his junior. There’s nothing good to be gained with him lounging about in the nude.</p><p>“Very good,” the woman answers. “I’ve had the healers tend to you, of course. With discretion,” she adds. Holst realizes it’s not entirely for his own benefit. He grins and waves his hand.</p><p>“Captain,” he guesses from his memory of the night before, and finds his guess right, the way she stiffens slightly at the shoulders, “it will take more than a bar fight to wage war on Fodlan.”</p><p>“It is an unusual circumstance, but you still serve the role of ambassador, and so of course your safety is of paramount importance. Lord Goneril, a list of suitable establishments had been provided for you. I saw to it myself. I understand that you are not familiar with Fhirdiad. However, you must know that you selected from the worst of it.”</p><p>His grin deepens. Is she chiding him? “Yes. Guilty as charged.” He flashes a palm at her in defeat. “So, you’re Knight Captain? Of Fhirdiad, is that right?”</p><p>“Yes, in His Majesty’s Service.” She juts a gloved hand in his direction. He takes it and gives it a firm shake, which she returns twice-over before crossing her arms again. “So that we are all apprised on the situation,” she continues curtly, “you should know that the three men you wounded were apprehended, but the fourth has run free.”</p><p>“One man,” Holst corrects. She cocks a slender brow at him. “I only managed one.”</p><p>“The two others in chains would contest otherwise.”</p><p>“No,” he attempts, wincing as he tries to piece together the evening from the broken pieces strewn across his throbbing head, “there was a— a man, I think. Dressed in black. With a sword.” The woman frowns. Apparently it doesn’t ring a bell. “A cloak. Very mysterious. Tall. Close to my height.”</p><p>Her eyes narrow. “And you say he was a swordsman?”</p><p>“Yes.” That he remembers without doubt: silver and sharp, cutting through the night like a white-hot bolt of lightening. “He was good with it.”</p><p>She sighs and rubs at her temples. “Very well. I will look into it.”</p><p>“There’s no need,” Holst quickly answers. “I mean to leave on the morrow. Not to bring any bad news to the east,” he amends, catching the way her gaze snaps back in his direction. “Quite the opposite. I promise that we can keep this particular matter to ourselves. Would prefer it that way, to be honest. It does nothing good for my reputation.”</p><p>“As you wish.” She drums her fingers against her crossed arms. There’s something bothering her. It doesn’t take a keen eye to understand that much. “And yet, before you depart. A favor.”</p><p>“Anything. Surely I owe you one.”</p><p>“Would you commit your memories of last night to writing?”</p><p>Holst frowns. “Is that really necessary? They were common thieves. Lucky for the last of them to have run away. I doubt you’ll find him now.”</p><p>“No,” the woman counters with the shake of her head. “Not for the thieves. For this swordsman of yours. There have been rumors of a man fitting his description with other affairs. A vigilante, if you must know. Perhaps you have some of your own in the east.”</p><p>“Yes,” Holst agrees. “Wars have a way of making them.”</p><p>“The war has been won for years. There is no need for vigilante justice. It causes chaos, nothing more.”</p><p>“I don’t know. I think I’ve been convinced of the value,” Holst says. The woman spears him with an icy gaze. He decides he’ll chalk it up to a difference in professional opinion. “But you were the one to drag me from the gutters, so I suppose you may have a point. I’ll see to it today.”</p><p>“Thank you, Lord Goneril.” She stands, brushing an invisible coat of dust from her flawless cuisses. “And so I shall leave you to it. I will post a knight at your door in the event that you require anything further. She will see you to your rented rooms as well, once you feel up for it. At your convenience, of course.”</p><p>“Thank you, Captain...”</p><p>“Galatea,” she offers him plainly. He feels like he’s been doused with ice water. For all of the rotten luck. “Is something the matter, Lord Goneril?”</p><p>“Not at all. Thank you, Captain Galatea, and well met. I am in your debt.”</p><p>She nods and bends to snatch her cuirass from the floor before walking with a brisk stride through the door. The latch closes quietly, well-oiled. Holst drops his head against his pillow and stare listlessly into the ceiling. His eyes water. He feels so pathetic that he nearly wishes his thief had aimed a little higher with his dagger. What a thing, to make a cuckold out of your own savior with a decade or two to spare.</p><p>He shuts his eyes. The dark stares back at him. It blinks open a sapphire eye. It’s impossible, of course, but what the hell does that matter? He runs his fingers over his bandaged side and revels in the tenderness while he scribes his looming letter in his mind. <em>Sorry, Hilda</em>, he’ll write, as soon as he’s found himself some paper and a pen: <em>I’ll need a few more days on my own.</em></p>
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